Meet the New Boss

Moores 3

It’s no secret that we’re not too impressed with the appointment of Peter Moores here at TFT. However, because you’re likely to hear a lot more gnashing of teeth in the coming days, it’s only fair we give you another perspective. Although the hashtag #ECBclowns has trended prominently in decent days, there are a lot of people who support this appointment. Long-time reader, Neil Harris, is one of them, and he makes his case very eloquently. Over to you Neil …

Meet the new boss ….he’s the same as the old boss.

Well we we’re all very happy with the old boss (well we were up to November 24th 2013) weren’t we?

The ECB like continuity, and in their hour of need they have turned to Andy Flower’s old boss Peter Moores to rescue the quickly sinking England ship. Despite England’s humiliating defeat in Australia the ECB still hold Flower in the highest regard, and as Flower thinks the world of Moores it is inevitable that he is the main man behind this decision.

Back in 2009 immediately after Moores was removed from his job Flower had this to say “Peter’s a wonderful coach,” . “He will definitely come back to international coaching one day.” And so he has returned.

If my Twitter stream is evidence then this isn’t a popular choice, slightly more popular than Giles but still not that popular. But why is that, just what did Moores get so badly wrong in his first spell as head coach.
England lost two major home series during his time, 1-0 to India’s  greatest ever team(http://www.espncricinfo.com/engvind/engine/match/258469.html) and 2-1 to the brilliant South Africans (http://www.espncricinfo.com/engvrsa/engine/match/296911.html) a match that proved to be more pivotal than even Moores would have probably thought at the end of it. It was the match that brought down the curtain on the Vaughan era and led to the mercurial KP being made captain, it was also a match where we saw the best and the worst of KP in one innings, England’s best batsman should have been intent on setting an impossible target for South Africa to chase, not reaching three figures in fancy dan style and holing out to long on.

Just 5 months on neither KP or Moores were in their jobs.

This saga is clearly still the main reason as to why Moores is an unpopular choice (at least in the twitter world) as the new coach, we are led to believe that Moores coaching methods were not only unpopular with Pietersen but also several other senior members of that 2009 side. There was a feeling that Moores was too dominant and had too much to say which didn’t go down well with the number of senior players England had the time.

I believe this is probably true, ask yourself this.. Would you be happy if you’d being doing your job reasonably well for the last few years and a new boss came in and told you your methods were wrong and things were changing? Maybe Moores tried to fix things too quickly or even fix things that didn’t need fixing? Moores say’s he has learnt from this, but I hope he hasn’t learnt too much as we have a lot of things that need fixing.

To read all the doom and gloom on Twitter you would have thought that Moores’s previous tenure was the worst thing that ever happened to English cricket, well let me tell you there were plenty of positives. He gave Matt Prior his debut, made Jimmy Anderson the spearhead of the attack and brought Greame Swann back from the wilderness. He also saw the potential in Flower and made him his assistant.

The England incident would have finished most people, they would simply not have the stomach for the fight and go off and do something else, but it didn’t finish Moores, he found himself another high pressure job as coach of the under performing Lancashire, he promptly led them to their first championship in 77 years. There was a blip the following season but they soon restored their top flight status.

The current Lancashire players have nothing but high praise for Moores, Kyle Hogg describing him as the best coach in cricket.
Now shouldn’t the best coach in cricket have the best job in cricket?

They are a lot of bloggers and tweeters who think they know more about cricket than anyone else, and they wanted to go abroad for Kirsten, but why is that. Why can’t we try our own coaches? There seems to be an epidemic in all English sport now where we decry homegrown talent and achievements on home soil and that we always must go abroad. I disagree strongly with this.

Peter Moores is the best coach in County cricket and is quite rightly the new England head coach.

I leave the last word with the person who I believe has the best cricket brain the business. Former England captain Nasser Hussain “”I was pleased they selected him, He is a good choice and has a good record at county level. He deserves a second chance,” he said.

“He has unfinished business.He was very dignified when he was sacked, he got his head down at Lancashire and did brilliantly there. He regrouped that team and that county and that’s what England need at the moment”.
“We need someone to look forward in a positive way and move things on in a winning and exciting style of cricket.”
Neil Harris

6 comments

  • Hmm…good points well made, but obfuscates the general feeling amongst cricket lovers that the architects of our shameful performance in the Winter of Discontent have shown no contrition, no analysis of what went wrong, and have deviously conspired to crowbar “Mooresy” in by depriving us of the joy of watching KP bat for England.
    Having read, and re-read, “Cooky’s” statement(y) I can’t bloody understand a word he said! So if Mooresy can get Cooky to talk some discernible sense, instead of trying to be a Corporate Gobshite it may be a sign some progress may be made??

  • I won’t reprise at length what I said on the other thread, but here’s the key bit:

    Moores Test record. 8 wins out of 22 games, including 3 wins against a WI team who were at rock bottom (ranked 8 at the time.) He needs to have learned an awful lot since then if this is all going to end well…

  • The England incident wouldn’t have finished most people or even most coaches. Do you think Moyes is finished?

    • Well that is actually a bit of an unkown, maybe a bit dramatic.
      But as an incident like that rarely happens there aren’t many examples.
      Ones I can think of though are Mickey Arthur a pretty high profile casualty, (now coaching at a grammar school)
      Bumble – went off into the comm box
      Tim Nielsen – Retired

      No, this will make Moyes much stronger, and I fully expect him to have great success in his next job.

      @njhcricket

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

copywriter copywriting